Learning to Fly
by HoVis
Summary: Martha Kent reflects on her son, his powers, and growing up. Please read and review!
1. Part One: Clark Kent

**A/N:** Hello everybody! This is my first fanfic in the Superman fandom, and I have to warn you that my knowledge of the "legend" is limited to the latest movie and a load of half-forgotten "Lois and Clark" episodes I watched when I was a kid (or rather, a slightly younger kid). I hope this is alright. I thought it would be kind of interesting to explore Clark's powers from the point of view of his mother (as a person hailing from the UK, it has felt very strange to type 'Mom'!), who doesn't receive an awful lot of screen time. Have fun!

**Disclaimer:** It pains me to say this, but I don't own Superman. I'm just... borrowing him.

**Learning to Fly**

Martha Kent could not be prouder of the boy she had brought up as her own, but looking back over the years there were certain moments which stood out from among them all. One was the day when Clark came into what she often referred to as his "majority" in terms of his powers – the day when he learnt to fly, or at least, realised that he _could_ defy the laws of gravity as well as those of human biology. The day – and the expression upon his face – remained clear in her mind even though the relative boy he had been at the time had since grown to be a man.

She had been in the kitchen, enjoying a rare moment of quiet laziness, when Clark barrelled into the room, his eyes wide with something that was almost like fear.

"Mom -" He said, and stopped short, his breaths coming as deep, desperate gasps. Martha rose immediately, and crossed to his side. She had seen that look before – on the face of the toddler who had accidentally broken the kitchen table and known instinctively that it was not normal, on the face of the eleven-year old who had received the shock of his young life upon looking at his mother's hand and suddenly seeing a dim image of the skeleton underneath.

"Clark?" She spoke his name, once, and then fell silent. Like any other teenage boy – though he was at that awkward age now, seventeen, a boy waiting to be a man but unsure of the kind of man he would make – he needed time to think and choose his words before he spoke. And Martha sensed that this conversation would carry more import than most – though of course the kind of conversations she had been forced to have with her son in regards to growing up were a little different to those which most mothers had with their sons.

Slowly, her boy shifted away from her, sitting down heavily (though not too heavily, Martha thought; last time he had looked this shell-shocked he had broken a chair simply by sitting in it) onto one of the chairs by the table. He held his hands out in front of them and surveyed his palms, before saying;

"I think you should sit down." He said. Martha did so, her sense of foreboding increasing by the moment. Before, whatever fear and surprise his powers had caused him, he had always greeted the revelation of new abilities with a tinge of excitement. There was none of that here. Perhaps he was a little more grown up now – or perhaps it was something too... _big_ for him to comprehend yet. Whatever it was, Martha hoped it wasn't something too big for she as a human mother to support her human in soul, if not in body, child.

"Clark," she said, her voice gently pressing, "just tell me. What is it?"

Her boy took a breath and then let the words out in a confused rush.

"I think I can fly."

Martha sat very, very still. Perhaps now she understood why Clark, so strong and brave, not just in body but in all the little things, like facing without complaint all his differences, had looked so scared when faced with _this_ difference. She could not speak.

After a moment, her boy's face contorted, and his eyes behind the glasses shied away from hers. The glasses had been a feature of his life since he was twelve years old, when one of his friends had alarmed him by asking him why he _never_ had anything wrong with him. A week later he had 'developed a need for a prescription' which had got thicker every year. Martha knew, though Clark hadn't told her, that the served a secondary, incidental use – they blocked what she called when in public his "long sightedness"; his x-ray vision. She was a mother, after all, and mothers notice things – even the lowering of a pair of glasses when that mother's son is asked, say, to check the truck's engine without springing the bonnet by his father.

"I'm sorry, Mom." Martha looked up sharply, and at the expression on her son's face she realised just how costly her silence could prove to be.

"Clark, I didn't mean – you know I didn't -" Martha stopped herself short. Clark was confused enough as it was; her own half-formed sentences would do nothing to allay that. One of them needed to be calm and collected, and since Martha wasn't the one who had just learnt she could fly, such a task would inevitably fall to _her_. She started again. "Are you sure? That you can...?" Somehow, she could still not quite bring herself to say the word. He nodded.

"Yeah." He leant forward, and he gave a sigh that Martha knew was about to pre-empt a healthy, angst-ridden phrase about the unfairness of it all. Good. He was a teenager after all. "Mom, I don't know what to do. With all the other... stuff, that was just about okay, but this is -"

His predictable soliloquy was cut off by a gruff voice from the door.

"This is different." Clark looked up, and Martha saw on his face just a little of the gratefulness that she felt at seeing that his father had been listening all the time. It would save either of them having to explain it again.

"What do you mean, Jonathon?" She asked, though she knew full well what her husband meant, and knew that Clark did too. But there were some things her boy needed to hear, as well as think. Her husband slowly took his place beside her and surveyed the young man they had moulded with a careful expression.

"What do think, Clark?" Martha suppressed a smile as her husband did one better and rallied Clark into saying the words himself; it would give them more reality then. Clark frowned, and Martha watched silently as the fear began to move towards anger.

"It's different because all the other things were just... one step up from what... everyone else can do. Everyone can run, I can just run faster. Everyone can see, I just see more." He paused dubiously. "But I don't think many people can fly."

There was silence in the little kitchen. Clark seemed lost in thought, Jonathon seemed simply lost, and all was quiet until the dog barked outside, breaking the deep calm. Clark jerked out of his thoughts and gave a slight smile.

"Do you reckon she's found her ball?"

"What?"

Clark shook his head.

"Never mind."

Martha looked him up and down once more, and realised at last that underneath the fear at the craziness of it all, and the anger at how _different_ it made him, there was something else as well, something which shone like a tiny, precious crystal.

"How did it feel?" She asked, and for but a moment, something like shame crossed his face.

"It felt good." He admitted at last. "It felt like – like even though I was only a few metres of the ground, I was still closer to the sun that I'd even been. It was... good."

Martha smiled gently.

"I'm glad." She said, and she was. Jonathon coughed awkwardly, and Martha thought with a smile how very like each other the two men in her life were. It was through the little things that she kept her feet. It seemed that now more than ever she would be needing them.

"What are you going to do?" Her husband, Clark's father in soul if not in blood, asked. Clark cocked his head to one side and caught his mother's eye. She nodded, and a slow mischievous smile crossed his face.

"I'm going to go and practice." He said, rising from the table and glancing hesitantly at his father. "Want to join me?"

Jonathon coughed once more, but Martha could tell that he was both pleased and proud that Clark had of his own volition invited him to join his adventure. And an adventure it would be. Martha could see them now, in her mind's eye, messing around in the barn and the hay bales till twilight put an end to their aerial escapades. Jonathon, just like Clark before him, caught Martha's eye, and she laughed.

"Go on, the pair of you. Though I don't know how good a coach you'll make, Jonathon, having never even stepped on a plane in your life."

But then Clark, the mischief in his eyes replaced by something calmer and warmer, said something unexpected.

"Don't worry, Mom. I think I know what to do. And if I fall it won't hurt."

And as he exited, Martha wondered where her boy had learnt such wisdom. It certainly hadn't been from _her_.

888

A week or so later, Clark came to her with _that_ look on his face again, except this time the excitement and exhilaration in it was far greater, and the fearer far less. Jonathon had told her little about their "flying lessons", save to say that Clark would tell her himself when he was ready. Martha did not press the issue; she knew that, as with all things in growing up, this step would be made in its own sweet time and none else.

"Mom," he said, his eyes bright behind the glasses, "can I show you?"

Martha cleaned and dried her hands of her cooking before turning to him. She had not gone with Clark and Jonathon when Clark had first made the revelation that he could fly, because she knew that Clark would rather she see the final product rather than the half-completed one. It was what mothers were for, after all; for making proud.

"Alright," she said, "in the barn?"

Clark nodded, and she walked out with him, keeping her pace even – not too fast and not too slow. When they entered the barn Clark turned to her with a smile and held his hands out. The barn was empty – evidently, as the learning to fly had been a 'father-son thing', this moment was to be one for mother and son alone.

"Dance with me?" He asked, and Martha, surprised, took his hands. They stood in the waltz position which, with a smile, Martha remembered teaching Clark a year previously for a school dance. He had grown a lot since then, in body as well in heart, and Martha was enveloped for a moment in the sheer hugeness and warmth of both his body and his heart. She wondered, with the biased affection of all mothers, why he did not have more girls chasing after him. They stood in the position, but Clark did not move. His expression was sombre. "Now," he said, "stand on my feet."

Martha did so, her frown of confusion only slight. She glanced up at Clark, and realised that the hand holding hers was trembling slightly. Clark was _nervous_.

"Go on, then."

Clark gave her a slight, sheepish grin.

"You'd better hold on. I haven't quite got the hang of the take-off thing." And with those encouraging words, he tightened his hold on her, bent his legs, and –

Martha let the smallest of gasps escape her as they stopped short with only a few inches to go between their heads and the roof of the barn. She looked down, her hand shaking a little too.

"When you said you wanted to show me," she said quietly, "I didn't think you meant like _this_."

Clark avoided her eyes, his expression undecided, and hovering between joy and sadness. She felt his heart speed up as they began to shift, dancing in the air, and for a single moment she understood entirely why he had been filled with such strange emotion the week before. They _were_ closer to the sun.

Then Martha lent in closer, and asked the question she knew he had been longing to hear.

"Does this thing go any higher?"

Clark laughed.

"If you want." A grin crossed his face. "But then, of course, there's the coming down..."

Martha laughed gently and, as they rose further into the twilight air through the hole in the roof of the barn (which she could get Clark to fix, now he could get to it so easily), she thought of the day when Clark had been given to them. He had been so tiny. Had she imagined what he would grow up to be, then? Would it have changed anything?

She looked up into her boy's face, his eyes filled with the exhilaration of flying, and she realised that she still could not imagine what he would do, what he would become in the future.

But that still would not change now, just as today could not change the gift she had been given when she had stumbled across the child she now called her own. Because whatever happened, she would always be the first person he had ever taken flying.

888

**A/N:** One chapter down, one more to go. Or, rather, one 'one-shot' down, one more to go.

Please review, they make me feel very, very happy!


	2. Part Two: Superman

**A/N:** Hello all! First of all, I must take a few moments to respond to my wonderful reviewers:

**Blueowl:** Thanks loads for your review – hope you enjoy Part Two!

**D. Tania:** Thanks. I really like "The Day After" by the way, though I haven't had a chance to read it all the way through yet... the part where he tries to pretend he can't see without his glasses is priceless.

**LA Suka:** Ah, I don't know... I just always thought the Man of Steel would be a Mummy's boy ;-) Thanks for your review!

**Dandette:** Many thanks for your review – hope you enjoy the second offering...!

**MoriahThePariah:** Aww, thanks. I hope you like chapter two. Btw, I was looking at your bio and certainly agree with your choice of favourite; I think "Getting Eaten Alive" should probably be made required reading for any Supes fan...

**Julia456:** Thanks for your review – I'm glad you enjoyed it and hope the second part lives up to expectation!

Anyway, here it is – part two of "Learning to Fly". Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** If I owned Superman, I'd save the world. Unfortunately I don't, so I have to satisfy myself with trying to bring a little bit of entertainment to myself and hopefully others through this humble fan-fic!

**Learning to Fly**

**Part Two**

The second time that her son made Martha Kent prouder than any other mother alive was an experience also tinged with shock, surprise, and frank astonishment at his taste in clothes. It had been three months (had it really been but three months? It seemed longer) since his departure at the age of twenty-one for Metropolis and his future with the _Daily Planet_, when Martha stepped into the newsagents and was greeted with the sight of her son on the front page of that very same broadsheet.

She stopped in her tracks, quite ridiculously shying from the curious gaze of the shop-owner. He couldn't tell, of course – the glasses were nowhere to be seen, and the clothes...

Martha almost laughed, then, and, with a sudden swing of feelings, wondered how blind the shop-keeper, who had know Clark for years, could_ not_ see that it was the very same person whose picture was adorning the front page underneath the bold, simple headline of "The Superman." It was catchy, Martha thought, and Clark would hate it.

Slowly, she picked up the newspaper, paid for it and left the shop, forgetting completely to buy whatever it was she had gone in for. When she got home, she sat down and read the article – though heavens, practically the entire _newspaper_ was taken up with news of her boy – underneath the headline, and then began to laugh. She did not stop until Jonathon walked in, whistling, and stopped short in surprise at her state.

"Martha? What on earth -" But then his eyes, too, fell upon the open newspaper, and his mouth opened in a brief "o" of surprise. Martha handed him the paper as he sat down heavily, looking almost as shocked as Clark had the day he had learnt he could fly.

But not quite. Martha waited in silence for her husband to read the article, written by one Lois Lane, who had both coined the term 'Superman' and, apparently, been saved from death by the superhero himself. Clark had spoken of Lois Lane before with no small amount of admiration, and Martha wondered exactly what her son thought of the article. She would not have long, Martha thought, to wait until she found out.

"Good Lord." Jonathon expelled sharply as he replaced the paper on the table. "How do you think he is?" Jonathon looked to her for an answer, but received it from a somewhat weary voice by the door.

"I'm alright." Martha turned, and there he was, her boy, dressed as he was in red cape and tight blue... Martha supposed 'costume' was the only term she could give it. He looked exhausted, emotionally and mentally if not physically, and Martha made a mental note to write to him far more often when he returned to the city once again. He had needed his family lately, she knew.

"Oh, Clark," she said, and that was enough encouragement that the hero of Metropolis needed to fall into his mother's embrace. Martha held him for a long time, longer than perhaps he needed. But strong as he was, Martha was only human, and she needed it.

With a slight sigh, Clark extricated himself from her grasp, and sat slowly down at the table, sweeping his cape up neatly as he did so. Martha sat too, wondering idly how many strange and wonderful conversations she had had with her son at that table – and how many more awaited them. He looked at them both, meeting their eyes uncertainly, and Martha realised that, once again as he had done so many times throughout his young journey through life, he was going to apologise to them.

"Mom, Dad, I'm -" But Jonathon shook his head, and Martha spoke gently.

"Don't." She said, and Clark closed his mouth, looking ill at ease as he nodded his understanding. His eyes inched towards the newspaper lying, abandoned, on the table, and they widened a little as they took in the headline and the image. He was holding a damaged helicopter in the air in the photograph. He smiled a little sheepishly, and Martha wondered if the newspapers would ever record _this_ side of the man they had dubbed "Super".

"I did try to be normal, you know." His statement contained no bitterness, no unhappiness. It was simply a fact. Martha knew, then, that he could no more live an 'ordinary' life than she could fly or prevent a helicopter from crashing. There was no sense in denying it. She was a wife and a mother, and she was good at it, so it was what she did. Her boy had powers which could save lives, preserve souls, and unite entire nations. Surely it would be an abhorrent sin to even think of ignoring them? Martha looked at her son and felt something she had never felt before in his presence – awe. Martha could well understand why the man in red, blue and yellow had been made so easily the acclaimed saviour of an entire city.

"I know." Martha said softly. "But we all have our talents. And I don't think we brought you up to waste yours."

Both Clark and Jonathon looked at her in surprise at that, and her husband frowned a little.

"Now, Martha, I'm not sure what..." Jonathon trailed off, looking anxious. Clark looked less like his father when he took the glasses of, Martha reflected silently, before moving to allay her husband's unspoken qualms. He had always tried to instil a sense of humility into their son.

"I didn't mean that, Jonathon." She said. "It isn't..." She sighed. She might have wished, then, for but one chance to have a _usual_ conversation with her son, about girls or about school, but she had never been one for wishes, and he was older now anyway. He would be needing his parent's guidance less and less, from now on. Martha Kent felt something almost like regret at this thought, but perhaps, as Clark as his tasks to fulfil – she could not say 'destiny', not truly – perhaps this was theirs. To teach and love him and then let go of him. Like the lark teaching the cuckoo to fly.

"It isn't the fame." Clark finished for her, his voice quiet. Martha looked up at him, at his sombre, serious expression as he gazed distantly at the newspaper, at the strong set of his shoulders, and knew that he was almost ready to fly on his own. "You once said to me, Dad, that I – that maybe I'm here for a reason." Clark stopped, looking momentarily confused at his own words.

"Maybe you are," his father (in every way that mattered, at least) said slowly, "but I don't see -" He stopped abruptly as he realised what Martha had realised the moment she saw the newspaper, and from the look in his eyes Martha knew that the realisation was no less painful for him than it had been for her. He pressed his lips together, and nodded. Then he chuckled softly. "I ought to have known you couldn't keep a low profile for long. We brought you up too well." Then he looked at Clark, frowning, and said the words which Martha knew Clark would only listen to from his father, and not from her; "But you can't save them all, you know."

Clark's father was a man of little words, and as something tensed in their boy's face Martha leant towards him, taking his hands, hands so large and warm that were now to become hands responsible – or so their owner thought – for thousands of lives, and met his gaze. A gaze which many would quail before, now.

"You went into journalism, Clark, because you wanted to – what did you say to me? – put a voice out for those who needed it. And you're a good writer, and that's fine, but you've got the sort of soul that always wants to do more. Your conscience wouldn't let you rest with that, so you – you became what you needed to be." She gestured helplessly at the suit, as it clashed proudly with the dim surroundings. "You needed to be seen like this, to make an impact, because then maybe ordinary people, people with different talents, who maybe can't fly but can do _something_ to the best of their abilities, will see you and do what _they_ can. I know this.

"But, Clark -" she smiled, looking into those eyes, suddenly caught in surprise at being read and understood so well, and imparted the last piece of wisdom she could to her son, before he flew the nest altogether "- there comes a point when anyone, even you, has to admit they have reached the edge of what they can do. You can't save everyone. Maybe there's a reason for that, as well. But you mustn't _try_ to save everyone, and you mustn't feel bad when you don't, though I know, knowing you, that you will. But even _Superman_ has to work within his own limitations. We all have them. Yours are just wider, but you still have to stay within them, otherwise you'll never have the energy to save anyone at all. Do you understand?"

Her boy held her gaze for a long, long moment, and Martha realised that she had been preparing those words for almost as long as he had been hers. From the day Kal-El of Krypton had become Clark Kent of Smallville, she had known she would have to let him go. _There's a lot that us little people can do_, she thought, _and would I have ever thought that here I would be, capable of so little myself in comparison, teaching this dear boy to fly?_

"I understand, Mom." He said at last, before rising and piercing her with a very different gaze. It was a gaze which could convict wrong-doers and inspire nations. "But you underestimate yourself, you know." The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled, a youthful, naïve smile on the face of the world's great hero. "I know it was you and Dad who taught me to fly, after all. And, I think -" he paused, and Martha didn't even realise she was about to be given one of the greatest gifts of her adult life, second only to the gift of Clark himself, her boy who fell to her from the sky, "- I think that you two finding me was planned, too."

Martha felt her husband beside her let out a breath as that golden gift dropped into their hearts. Planned? Perhaps. But the words behind the words – their dear boy's sincere, gentle gratefulness, was the greatest thing of all.

Martha rose silently, and as her boy embraced her, she reflected once again that his heart was by the far his greatest strength. She wondered if the people of Metropolis, or Lois Lane of the Daily Planet, would ever realise that.

His father sat back and smiled.

"This is all very well, Clark," he said, his expression deadpan but his eyes sparkling – neither of her boys could keep a straight face for long, "but what on earth were you thinking when you chose that suit?"

Clark seemed a little caught of balance by that, before replying, poker-faced – perhaps journalism had helped him improve it –

"I was lent it by a textiles company. Good advertising, don't you think?"

They all laughed, and in days to come Martha Kent would think of that strange, innocuous image, of the Man of Steel laughing in her dusty kitchen, and smile at the strange and wonderful tricks that life plays on us all.

888

**A/N:** Well, there it is; I hope you enjoyed and, if you did, press that wonderful button below and tell me! It really does make my day.

Watch out for "Two Lives", my own take on the very well-worn premise of Clark's two lives becoming one. There; I've told people, so I'm going to have to post it!

By the way, I was wondering if any American readers out there could give me some advice. I'm from England, and am thinking of going to University in America at one of the Ivy League universities, but a lot of the info is gibberish to me. What form does a degree take (and how exactly do majors and minors work?), how long does it last, is it a good idea? Any advice you could give me would be most appreciated!


End file.
